The next series of posts on this blog will look at the three key parts of your degree completion decision: “who you are”, careers, and universities. Source: Your Future is Calling. The book is a road map for you to earn your degree quickly and efficiently. It is important that you do the work to find the right fit for you. Think of your task as if you were shopping for a new pair of shoes. You have to shop around to find out what is available. You have to try on the shoes to make sure they don’t hurt your feet. You have to look at them in the mirror. You have to examine the price tag to see if you can afford them. The important point is that, in the end only you can tell if those new shoes fit you. The only difference here is that the new shoes you are shopping for (your degree) you will wear every day for the rest of your life, and if they do not fit, they will not only hurt your feet, they will create pain in every part of your life.

It is important to begin at the beginning – with “who you are”. The BUZZ Todaytalks about why it all needs to start with you.

“Who you are”: In many ways we are all different. Our lives and experiences mold us. What I enjoy may not at all appeal to you. I like standing in a cold, fast flowing stream and casting a fly over and over again trying to tempt a trout I cannot even see into biting on a glob of thread and feathers only to release the fish once I have landed him in a net.

Most of you would not find this appealing at all. Some might find it revolting, even barbaric. But that is exactly the point. We are all different. What motivates each of us to do what we do, to be “who we are” is very much about each of us.

When it comes to deciding on a degree, a college, a career you need to start with yourself. In the end, all of these have to fit you, just as the shoes in the BUZZ Todayhave to fit you. No one else can tell you if they fit. You have to try them on. To do that you have to have good information. We will come back to this in posts here over the weeks and months to come.

In earlier blog posts we looked at why the traditional quality measures of high price and tight admissions selectivity provides little helpful information for adult learners making university and career decisions. The example was the grand daddy of all high quality American Universities, Harvard University.

But even with the detailed look at what makes Harvard great, you are still left with little practical information about how to select a career and a university. These decisions are both explored in detail in my book, Your Future is Calling. In BUZZ Today we see a very practical case study for someone attending a school other than Harvard. Source: Hechinger Report Joyce English was about to start studying toward an associate degree she hoped would lead to a job as a consultant to healthcare companies around Tacoma, Wash., where she lives. Then she discovered a database. English changed her mind and is now majoring in what she learned is the more lucrative field of business management at Pierce College.

The point of our discussion in this blog is that there is good information to help you select both a career and a college. That information is more detailed and more specific to your decisions than the traditional data available in popular sources.

The Buzz Today source has specific information available in a study called “New Pressure on Colleges to Disclose Grad’s Earnings”. Here are a few facts.

New data is available about career and college decisions. I talk about them in Your Future is Calling. (Note: Very detailed information about Pierce College for example, is available in Chapter 9 of the book titled: “How to Select the Right School”). New data is becoming available.

In Virginia, graduates of four-year nursing programs earn more than twice as much as liberal-arts majors, on average, and graduates of the University of Richmond make almost 72 percent more than graduates of Hollins University. In Tennessee, majors in health professions make two and a half times what philosophy and religious-studies majors make, and graduates of the University of Memphis earn 13 percent more than graduates of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

The point of this discussion is not to direct you to Virginia or Tennessee or even to a specific college or university. The point of this discussion is to make the point that it does matter what you study and where you go to school. You need good information to make good choices.

While income is not the only thing to consider, it is an important consideration for over 90% of those surveyed. In the end, your biggest challenge is to invest in education and a career that fits “who you are” but income is clearly a factor in those decisions. The take away is to choose wisely based on solid information.